Hawke64

I have tried it, since I have access to it through Steam Family Sharing (i.e. I did not and would not purchase it purposefully as it is not exactly my genre, so I am not the target audience), but bounced off after the first session, before finishing the first chapter, Childhood/Obscurity. I guess, if you like the setting, it should be fine. The art is a bit worse, the animations are a bit faster. I think something has changed with the writing style but might be misremembering. I have not progressed far enough to see how hard the stat requirements are, but there are 2 extra currencies (Sanity and the blue one) to get around alignment-locked choices (3 pairs of axes). Tried Thirsty Suitors. Liked the music, aesthetic, and the system requirements. Strongly disliked all gameplay systems I've come into contact with - the RPGMaker-style combat, the QTEs, and the wooden controls for skating. Finished Code Zodiac. It was an enjoyable boss rush game in a sci-fi setting. The controls, unfortunately, were unrebindable. Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. I've spent ~10 minutes turning a boss into a pincushion while sitting on a cliff outside of the arena. The controls are rebindable and the movement is quite satisfying. Naturally, I was mostly sneaking or sprinting (and, surprisingly, swimming). That is, the first post-demo session was fairly story-free.

Jerian This is the demo. This is the release version. I am disappointed and have to recreate my character. Can't quite call a Steam Family-Shared title "free", but it is new and I am curious (and fairly sceptical about it), so forth we go.

Veil of the Witch The Unique Talents are glorious. Factually incorrect. Monsters have 3 rotating weak points. Humans have 1 static (with 1 exception) and tend to die quicker. Took about 4 hours. (Flashback spoiler) I did not expect it to work. Nice. Short of hand-crafted paths, having the RNG'd ones shorter is welcome. Expedition ending slides

"Finished" Veil of the Witch. By that I mean reaching the extended ending and maxing out 1 partnership between a starting and an optional companion. As a part of the game's RNG nature, even the extended ending does taste a bit sour (i.e., there is no resolution for the main conflict, as one of the developers mentioned, it gets resolved off-screen), as well as the mindless grind it becomes, should one wish to get all story-related events or achievements. Still, the first few runs were quite enjoyable and the progress from the original game was stunning. The pacing and the character development within a run are fantastic, though I would love to be able to have guaranteed Unique Skills (which are extremely powerful) alongside the Ultimate Trial difficulty (the highest one). So, I have returned to the original Lost Eidolons which had not finished before starting VotW, and the pacing is significantly poorer - the non-interactive cutscenes take half an hour, the camp activities consist of teleporting from quest marker to quest marker and pressing Interact on the NPCs (there are 2-3 out of dozens conversations that require some cognitive effort and I have already been skipping the small talk dialogue bubbles), and fielding 10 units (5 of whom have only the default attack) leads to drawn out battles where I slowly creep to the boss in the tightest formation I can. From what I have gleaned from the guides, there are some choices in the last 3-4 chapters (out of 26) and I am so, so close.

The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante is free to keep on Steam until 23 July. While I believe that it is the perfect example why Ren'Py is the best engine for visual novels (Brante uses Unity), it is free and it looks pretty, despite severely lacking the basic QoL features. Edit. The "hardcore RPG" part is not accurate. Save 100% on The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante on SteamA narrative-driven hardcore RPG set in a gritty world ruled by real but unrelenting gods. Set out on a challenging lifetime journey, where every choice has a price and entails consequences. Will you b

I've been playing Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch and it is an amazing improvement over the first game in all aspects. The developers addressed the issues I had with the first Lost Eidolons - they culled the small talk and fetch quests, made the characters distinct and good-looking, and even added helmets and character customisation (granted, only name, gender expression, and skin colour, but it is progress). The combat encounters are also more varied and challenging, while the character skill progression has a good pace. While it is still just a tactical game with a linear story and some optional content, now with RNG in the mix, it is, nonetheless, enjoyable. There are difficulty options, fairly frequent auto-saves (on every area transition, though the OS file management system has to be used for the save file management), rebindable controls, adequate system requirements, and skippable animations. There are also persistent upgrades (most things reset between expeditions due to the game being a Rogue-like) and a limited ability to replay the previous battles. The soundtrack does not seem to have any vocal tracks, but it fits the game well and is quite pleasant to listen to. I have reached the Normal Ending and currently trying to farm for the Completionist one and gather all optional party members. Hopefully, I will be able to achieve both around the same time and within a reasonable time frame (without getting bored).

Kind of, though there are fewer games I am extremely enthusiastic about, rather than "wait for a sale and try". There is also the issue of discoverability when there are a lot of lower quality titles which can hinder the chances of the first-time releases. The successful titles also set the expectations of the "production values", so fewer studios can invest that. Robert Yang has updated Radiator 2 to Radiator Forever. https://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2026/07/radiator-forever-is-gay-as-service-its.html I have found a readable EULA (which does not say that the game's assets belong to the developer) and wanted to share it: https://store.steampowered.com//eula/4517370_eula_0

Thank you for looking into it. The checks seem to be less frequent now.

Retro Abyss All screenshots are fairly close to the end-game. Absinthia Virtue and a Sledgehammer (demo) I chuckled at this and realised that I really do like Saints Row. Naturally, option 5 should have been "Is it a challenge?". Servers are run by ethereal fairies and require no physical infrastructure, of course. The game is very pretty but I find the gap in understanding (like not smoking or breaking electronic devices in a forest) to be enormous. Enthropy (demo) Another very stylish game. The combat, unfortunately, was similar to the RPGMaker.

Not news but an approach I find reasonable: https://www.pentadact.com/2026-01-08-15-years-of-indie-dev-in-4-bits-of-advice/ Admittedly, a large cost sink is the visual assets and VA, while the crowd who can spend several thousands on their hardware are also more likely to have $70 of disposable income, but there are more people with $20. That is to say, the lower the system requirements, including the storage, the better for the production costs, the gamers, and the environment.

After looking through the screenshots, I've realised that I "finished" (as in, got pretty far and grew tired of bugs) Retro Abyss. A somewhat meta bullet-hell. The "numbers go up" part and the visual design were enjoyable, the story did not quite land for me (the in-game player seems to be a set character) and the writing was somewhat off in terms of phrasing or translation. The main issue is that the game stopped saving the progress between the sessions at some point and the cut-scenes were unskippable. Decided to let Absinthia be - I really do not like the RPGMaker combat system and the linear story, even if the core party is quite appealing. Replayed I was a Teenage Exocolonist for the "best" ending and got a few more along the way. It is welcome to see a mostly visual novel that takes the advantage of Unity not being a VN-only engine (i.e. you can run around the maps with the keyboard). It is somewhat less enjoyable when you are going from the start to the end and trying to optimise to hit few very specific things, but it was quite nice to see some mid-game endings and the full character endings. Virtue and a Sledgehammer demo. I liked the aesthetic and the presentation, but destroying robots in a forest felt wrong. One must go for the squishy and, most importantly, not-flameable meatbag that had put the robots there. Which, I assume, was the goal, but unachieveable during the demo. Still, reminded me of Johnny Gat.

Yes. Sent to you via DM.

I've got several more expiring keys I would like to share (HumbleBundle): BAD END THEATER (it is nice) Dustborn (started but have not finished yet, the visual design is cool) We Know the Devil (a VN) Harmony: The Fall of Reverie (a VN I have not finished; the saving system is poorly made, so copying the files manually is necessary to have hard saves) Death of a Wish (an excellent action game) The August Before

Rock Paper ShotgunValve's Steam Machine gets competition in the "Stim Machi...French hardware sellers LDLC have released a PC Box they originally dubbed the "Stim Machine", as an alternative to Valve's Steam Machine. Not purchasing either at the moment, but they look somewhat appealing. Though, a fully custom PC would provide a better value/cost ratio, getting the parts might be challenging.

Finished the first playthrough of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist. About 25% (?) of the colonists died. The highlight of the run was when I was making out with an NPC, then a random wildlife fatally tossed the said NPC off the nearest cliff in the same scene. The save files are JSON, so I was still able to reach a more favourable conclusion despite missing an event and for some obscure reason also being unable to have a certain NPC to have an "accident", despite having high Persuasion (to ask to have a chat on the walls), Combat (to break the neck), and Perception (to toss the body over the walls without anyone noticing). So, I just swapped the name in the file to my buddy. The story is a time loop of 10 years where you land on an unknown planet and try not to die. The second playthrough "remembers" some of the events, thus, the investigations are shorter and many issues can be avoided or mitigated. Edit. I am fairly certain that someone else on the forums played it, but I forgot who.